Apology is not a bad word

A number of people have commented on the ways in which current Republican candidates for president differ from President Ronald Reagan, generally taking positions that are more conservative than he held. One example of that came as I recently read yet another denunciation of President Barack Obama by a Republican candidate who claimed the president was a serial apologizer for America. Some variant of “No president should ever apologize for America” has become a fairly constant theme in the Republican primary.

As I read it, I was reminded of the time President Reagan and I teamed — with a number of other people — to do precisely what these candidates are denouncing: apologize on behalf of America, not for an accident, but for a conscious, deliberate national policy choice.

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There are a number of cases of presidents apologizing for accidents — the mistaken shooting-down of an airliner, a crash at sea, etc. But I assume that the Republican critics of Obama are denying that neither they nor any properly patriotic American president would ever apologize for something done as a matter of official policy.

That is exactly what I helped Reagan do in 1988.

In the fall 1987, as chairman of the Administrative Law Subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee, I brought to the floor legislation known as the Redress Bill, which dealt with the internment of Japanese-American citizens in camps during World War II. The bill included a payment to those survivors who were still alive, but it was universally considered to be the less important part of the legislation.

For the Japanese-American community, the central piece of that bill was Section 2, which stated that “The Congress recognizes that … a grave injustice was done to both citizens and permanent resident aliens of Japanese ancestry. …” The section concludes, in words that I had the great privilege of reading on the floor of the House in fall 1987:

“For these fundamental violations of the basic civil liberties and constitutional rights of these individuals of Japanese ancestry, the Congress apologizes on behalf of the nation.”

Reading those words on the floor will always be one of the highlights of my congressional career, because a willingness to recognize one’s imperfections, and sincerely to apologize when those have led one to wrong others is a mark not of weakness but of moral strength, for a nation no less than an individual. So when I was able to say those words, when both the House and the Senate voted to enact them, and when Reagan signed them into law — that was a moment of pride for America, not shame.

“The Congress apologizes on behalf of the nation.”

By today’s Republican presidential candidates’ standards, that statement should not have been made, and Reagan should have vetoed it once it was. Fortunately, Ronald Reagan had in many respects higher standards than those Republican candidates who seek to succeed him regarding the duty we owe each other to treat one another decently.

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) serves as ranking member on the House Financial Services Committee.